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Emily Alford

Getting Real: Three Stories

By Emily Alford

All of us transgendered people know shame, or guilt, for being what we are. All of us also know that "something is going on" that renders us free of shame and guilt alike. We're not the freaks we used to be. Here are three anecdotes that speak to that point.

First story: A few weeks ago I went to one of the major conventions of my profession, the Organization of American Historians. Just naming the group may make it sound like a Nerd's Nightmare, but I always enjoy the OAH. One reason is that everybody there has a common subject (much like a gender convention). Another is that there is a general sense that expanding the idea of being American is a good idea. Black history, women's history, gay history, Native American history: all these and more get a serious hearing. It's not a matter of "politically correct." It's one of saying that people count, whatever they happen to be, and that people of every sort have a past worth knowing about.

Add us to the list, as two separate developments told me. One was finding Professor Patricia Bonomi's study of Lord Cornbury, the eighteenth-century governor of New York who is a minor gender-community icon, on display at the book exhibit. It's published by one of the most prestigious of academic houses, the University of North Carolina Press. Bonomi, who is emerita at New York University, has done her best both to rescue Cornbury from the scorn/amusement that his supposed cross-dressing has visited upon his memory and to discuss the general problem of gender in his time. I bought the book and intend to review it here soon. The immediate point is that Bonomi's book takes the whole issue out of the realm of freakdom and into that of legitimate and serious inquiry.

The other development was finding a professional session on the general issue of gender crossing and boundary transgression. It was to be expected. The theme of the whole convention was "crossing boundaries." The paper that really caught me was by Professor Joanne Meyerowitz of the University of Cincinnati on the issue of trans-gender people in relation to Albert Kinsey, of the Kinsey report. Outing myself, I wrote to Meyerowitz to ask for a copy of the paper. She promises I'll get it, together with an article she already has published. She is working on a history of transsexualism in twentieth century America, and on the basis of the paper I'm looking forward to her book. I'll have more to say when the paper and the article get to me. The point of it: transgendered people have a history that is worth the knowing. We've made a history, and that is even more worth knowing.

Story two: Just after I returned from the convention I flipped on my television and found that the cellest Yo-Yo Ma was doing a program on the Bach cello sonatas. (Okay, I don't watch Jerry Springer.) I'd seen him discuss that kind of music before and dropped what I was doing to watch. He turned out to be working with a Japanese dancer whose name I could not catch. When the dancer spoke of how his parents accepted his love of feminine beauty, for himself, my ears and eyes opened. In the second half of the program, Ma played Bach, and the dancer, fully en femme, danced. He had made it plain that he delighted in performing womanhood, and Ma, one of the best musicians of our time, delighted just as much in providing the music that made the performance possible. No freakness, just two high level artists working together. Vaguely I knew that the dancer was male. But the performance was superb.

Story three: This morning, a Saturday, I switched on my radio to National Public Radio's Weekend Edition. For people who don't know that program, it's hosted by a guy, Scott Simon, and at the end of the hour it always includes a long cultural spot. This time the spot was taken by Jan Morris. When she transitioned early in the 1970s it struck me almost as hard as when I learned about Christine Jorgensen at the age of six. I was in New Zealand at the time, and my source was a gushy article in Time Magazine. Yes, it could be done.

Jan Morris

Morris broadcast today from the BBC studios in Porthmadog, North Wales. I know that part of the world and could probably find her house. Once I found myself standing next to her in an airport duty-free shop. But the famous deserve to be left alone, so I did. The key is that on today's NPR broadcast not a word was said about her having been transsexual. Simon introduced her as "simply one of the best writers in the world." He and she talked about her most recent book, and she read from it. And that was that.

What's the moral? It would be nice to say that things are just "changing" and "getting better." But history doesn't happen like that. James Morris may have had an advantage. He grew up in the tolerant context of the British upper class. He outed himself to his spouse immediately, and to his children as well as he could. But he still had to be brave and say (with Martin Luther) "here I stand." The people Joanne Meyerwitz is studying had a much more difficult time of it. Most insisted on maintaining secrecy, and in their context that was right. But her respect for them as pioneers is palpable. Lord Cornbury may not have been one of us at all. So what?

We have a history anyway. We'll have more. But we are the ones who will make it.

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